


Sworn

by Baylor



Category: Angel: the Series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Alternate Universe, Friendship, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Souls, Teenagers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-25
Updated: 2017-03-25
Packaged: 2018-10-10 11:54:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,656
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10437210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Baylor/pseuds/Baylor
Summary: Spike and Dawn, finding their way after losing Buffy.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I found a stash of old Buffy and Angel fic while I was clearing out my hard drive that don't seem to have seen the light of day before, so here you go.
> 
> Post Season 5 Buffy the Vampire Slayer and post the Season 3 episode Lullaby in Angel the Series. AU of both series.

It’s not surprising, really, that Dawn ended up in summer school, what with losing both her mother and her sister in the same year, finding out that she used to be a mystical ball of energy, and almost being killed by an ancient god. 

At least, Spike figured, it probably wasn’t surprising to other people. He doesn’t know much about modern public education and grade point averages.

“It’s not fair,” Dawn complained to him, slumping down in the comfy chair and kicking at his table with one Ked-clad foot. “It’s summer. You would think that after my bad year, they would want to give me a break so I can relax and come back in the fall all refreshed, or something.”

“I don’t see the point of any of it, really,” Spike said. “Growing up with a Slayer, you’ve got to know more than any other kid in school.”

“I know, right?” Dawn said. “But Giles is acting like it’s the end of the world. And it so totally isn’t, because we’ve all seen the end of the world.”

Spike snorted. “And then some. What does Giles know? I haven’t been to high school, and I do quite well for myself.”

Dawn paused and gave him a severe look. “You live in a crypt,” she pointed out.

“And a right nice one,” Spike said, jabbing a finger in her direction. “Speaking of Giles, does he know you’re here?”

Dawn scowled at him guiltily and he snapped at her impatiently until she slapped her hot pink cell phone into his hand. Spike flopped down on the bench and dialed while Dawn turned on the television and flipped to _Passions_.

“Thought you might want to know that the niblet is over at my place,” he said when Giles picked up. 

There was a long pause, and then Giles said, “Tell her to do her homework. I’ll come by and get her when the shop closes.”

“Right,” Spike said, and snapped the phone shut. “Do your homework,” he said to Dawn.

“After _Passions_ ,” she said, and Spike never argues when his stories are on. 

That was summer. He slept in the morning, watched television with Dawn in the afternoon, made sure she did her homework, patrolled at night. It kept him busy, gave him less time to think. 

Dawn talked to him about school, about boys, about clothes, about movies, about something called Five Times Everything, about just about anything that wasn’t Buffy. He figured maybe everyone else was talking enough about Buffy with her. He certainly wasn’t bringing it up. 

“No Dawn tomorrow,” Giles said one evening when he picked her up. Dawn was studiously looking at the walls, not at Spike.

“Day off?” he asked, eyeballing Dawn warily. 

Giles cleared his throat and fidgeted with his glasses. “We’re going to family court, about custody of Dawn,” he said. 

Dawn looked practicedly bored.

“That right?” Spike asked. “Thought you and Buffy had that all drawn up after . . . earlier this year.”

Giles nodded. “We did, but Child Services has to approve it. Make sure I’m fit and all that,” he said. 

Dawn swung her backpack lazily on her arm and drew patterns in the dirt with the tip of her shoe.

“All right then,” Spike said. “Day after, little bit. I’ll let you know what happens on Passions.”

Giles gave him a disapproving look. Spike took the high road and ignored him.

“All squared away with the court people?” he asked Dawn two days later, during a commercial break.

She nodded, intently watching the Snuggle advertisement. “I can stay with Giles,” she said finally. “At home.”

“Good,” Spike said, then cocked his head to study her. “Isn’t it?”

Dawn examined her nails. She shrugged. “Yeah. I don’t have to move, go live with strangers or anything weird like that.” Spike wondered where her dad had buggered off to, but decided not to ask. She shrugged again. “They moved Mom’s stuff out of her room. For Giles.”

“I know,” Spike said. He’d taken Dawn to a movie that night and when he brought her home Xander had been taking boxes into the basement.

“They haven’t moved Buffy’s stuff,” Dawn added. She picked at a cuticle. 

“No,” Spike said. The room was frozen in time, a memorial to the Slayer, everything just as it was the night he’d sworn to Buffy he would protect Dawn. 

_Passions_ came back on.

* * *

Giles kept the shop open late a couple of nights a week, and the Scooby gang was all tied up with whatever it was they did, so Spike started coming over to the house and teaching Dawn to play poker. They played for quarters, and at first he was up $6.75, but by the end of August Dawn was ahead $3.50.

Spike swore colorfully as Dawn displayed her full house, and she smirked smugly. “Hey, Spike,” she said when he was done, “could you teach me how to drive?”

They took Joyce’s Camry out to the deserted school parking lot and Dawn got behind the wheel. She reached for the key.

“Wait up,” Spike said. “Put your seatbelt on.”

“You’re not wearing yours,” she said testily.

“I’m already dead,” Spike reminded her. She buckled up. “Now, make sure you’re in park. And check your mirrors, get them where you can see.” Dawn adjusted the rearview and checked the side.

“All right,” she said with a decisive nod. 

“All right, turn the ignition.”

Dawn did, then sat grinning as the car idled. Spike shook his head. “We haven’t even started,” he said. 

“Yay!” Dawn said, and gave him a blinding smile. “Giles gets so freaked out every time I bring it up. He was never going to teach me.”

“I guess the Watcher Council doesn’t cover this,” Spike said dryly. “When you’re ready, put your foot on the brake, put it in drive and go to the end of the lot and stop.”

Dawn successfully drove a neat square around the lot and ended her lesson with enthusiastic clapping and bouncing in her seat. 

“Next time we should totally go on the road,” Dawn said.

“Next time we can learn about reverse and parking,” Spike said, and took her home.

* * * 

Thankfully, they were at the house and not at driving lessons when that demon biker gang descended on Sunnydale. Spike heard that Willow provided a pretty mighty magical smackdown on the gang, though why she let them wreck half the town first he couldn’t figure.

But Dawn was safe, and that was Spike’s concern. He didn’t care all that much for Sunnydale, and anyway, it was always getting blown up. It wasn’t very good for Dawn, though, to live in a place that was a shambles.

It certainly wasn’t very safe for her to run away from home in a place that was a shambles.

“Why do you think she’s run off?” he snapped at Xander as he shoved some stakes into his coat. “You’re sure no one’s taken her or something like that?”

“No, she –” Xander was pasty and sweating, but that was pretty much his baseline. He held his hands out. “She had a big fight with Willow. Well, me too. And she ran out. We thought she might come here. Giles is at the Magic Box and everyone’s already out looking.”

“What were you fighting about?” Spike asked and Xander just pressed his lips together in response. “Fine,” he said tersely. “I’m going to find her.”

He stormed out, leaving Xander in the crypt.

She wasn’t in the school parking lot, so he went right out to the site. 

She would have been hard for a person to find, pressed into the shadows with her arms around her knees, but Spike wasn’t a person.

“Hey,” he said, and crouched down beside her.

“Hey,” she answered after a moment, quiet and young.

Spike sniffed and sat beside her, shoulder to shoulder against the chilly wall. 

“I’m guessing this isn’t because Giles won’t change your curfew to midnight,” Spike said. He’d been hoping for a ghost of a smile there, but he didn’t get it.

“They tried to bring her back,” Dawn said numbly. “Willow tried to bring Buffy back.”

Spike held very still. 

“It didn’t work,” Dawn whispered, and turned to him so he put his arms around her and she sobbed until she was screaming. He let her dig her little fingers into him viciously and get tears and snot all over his coat until finally she was limp and heavy, her breaths little hitching shudders.

“Come on, niblet,” he said, and stood her up. “Let’s get you home.”

* * * 

Willow rushed out of the house when he pulled the bike up.

“Dawnie, oh baby, you’re all right? You’re okay? Sweetie, you scared us to death,” Willow babbled as she pulled at Dawn, who jerked away and tossed her head back defiantly. 

“Get out of my house, Willow,” Dawn spat at her, and stalked inside and straight up the stairs. 

Spike followed her, carefully not looking at Willow. 

Giles was waiting at the door.

“She’s all right,” Spike told him. He cut a look inside at Xander and Tara. “You know what this is about?”

“No,” Giles said, looking from Spike to the Scoobies and back. “Did Dawn tell you? Where did you find her?”

Spike took at step back, out of the door. He could hear Willow crying on the sidewalk behind him. “You’d better talk to this lot, Watcher,” he said. “They don’t know what they’re about.”

Then he left, before he could hurt anyone, chip be damned.

* * * 

Xander tried to tell him that they’d never meant for Dawn to find out, if it didn’t work, which it hadn’t, and Spike had calmly told him that he didn’t care if the back of his head exploded, he would hurt him if he ever brought it up again.

No one brought it up again. Well, no one except Dawn.

“They thought it was the right thing to do,” she said after _Passions_.

“Well, they were wrong,” Spike said.

“That’s what Giles said.” She pulled at a loose nail. The kid’s fingers were starting to look like a horror show. “You helped me, when I tried to bring Mom back.”

“Yeah,” Spike said, and stared at the wall. “I shouldn’t have. I didn’t think you’d go through with it, but I shouldn’t have anyway.”

“Buffy said I was wrong,” Dawn added. 

“Yeah,” Spike agreed. 

“Hey, Spike?” Dawn asked, and looked at him, so he looked back. 

“Yes,” he said.

“Could you teach me how to fight?”

The first rule of fight class was Don’t Tell Giles About Fight Class. In truth, Giles was far more qualified than Spike to teach Dawn to defend herself, but she hadn’t come to Giles, she’d come to him, and he figured an excellent way to keep her safe was to teach her how to help herself. Not that Spike planned on going anywhere, but you never knew how things might go.

Besides, she couldn’t hurt him, not really, so he let her bash him in the face and throw him to the floor and kick him in the groin. Well, that last had been an accident but when he’d gotten his voice back he’d advised her that it was an excellent technique against a male opponent of any species. 

He couldn’t fight back, so eventually she was going to need a real sparring partner, but they were getting the basics down. 

Dawn had him facedown in the dirt, her foot on his neck when someone rapped at the door and Clem let himself in.

“Uh, Spike?” he said nervously, and Dawn jumped off of him. Spike stood and dusted himself off. 

“Clem,” he greeted him, and nodded to Dawn. “Dawn. We were just practicing.”

Clem relaxed, smiled, and waved at Dawn, who smiled timidly and gave a little wave back. Clem hoisted up the box in his hand.

“Just dropping this off. Thanks for spotting me the other night,” he said.

“No problem,” Spike said, taking the box and popping it open.

Two gray kittens, one with blue eyes and one with green eyes, stuck their heads out and cried. 

“Ooooohhhhh,” Dawn said, already reaching for them. “Oh my God, Spike, what are they for?” and she had one in each hand, pressing them to her face, her expression blissful.

Clem laughed. “They’re for –“

“You,” Spike finished, slapping Clem’s shoulder. “They’re for you, Dawn, because girls love baby kittens,” he said, glaring at Clem.

“Oh, right,” Clem agreed. “Hey, they like you.”

The kittens were pawing at Dawn’s face and trying to climb onto her shoulders, little squeaks coming out of their tiny mouths.

“For me? For me?” Dawn said, giving one of the kittens kisses all over its face. “I love them! Thank you so much!”

“I’m just that kind of guy,” Spike said. 

* * * 

Dawn reported that a bunch of weird things were happening to Willow, time jumping around and then some black van following her about town. Spike thought Willow was hitting the magic juice too hard.

Her turning invisible one day didn’t disabuse him of that notion. 

“She thinks it has to do with that black van,” Dawn informed him. She was in the kitchen eating crackers with spray cheese while Sassy, the gray kitten with green eyes, and Blue, the gray kitten with blue eyes, crawled around the counter and begged for bites of cheese. 

“I think Willow’s getting paranoid,” Spike said, and let Sassy bite his finger and hang on. She made a squeaky growling noise at him and he growled softly back at her.

“Well, she _did_ turn invisible,” Dawn said. “That’s pretty weird.”

“Welcome to Sunnydale,” Spike said. 

Dawn informed him later that the black van belonged to these guys Buffy had gone to high school with, who had formed some kind of revenge of the nerds evil union and targeted Willow as their rival. 

“Why?” Spike said, and added, “That’s stupid.”

“I know, right?” Dawn said, and then told him about these cute guys her friend Janice knew and how one of them had been asking about Dawn. 

Spike sincerely hoped that by the time Dawn was ready to lose her virginity, she’d moved into the I-don’t-speak-to-adults phase of adolescence that Dr. Phil had taught him about.

That was going to be a long way off anyway, he decided that weekend, when the cute guy turned out to be a vampire and Spike found him and Dawn necking – in a nearly vampiric sense of the word – at lover’s lane. He staked lover boy and took Dawn and Janice home.

“It’s fine for me to hang out with a vampire when it’s you,” Dawn said angrily after they left Janice’s house. 

“I won’t hurt you,” Spike said. “I _can’t_ hurt you.”

“I didn’t _know_ he was a vampire,” Dawn protested.

“Oh, so you’re just making out with guys you don’t know now, are you?” Spike said.

“We’d seen each other at parties before,” she said defensively. 

“Well, next time check to see if you can see him in the mirror before you let him get a nibble of you,” Spike advised. Then he promised not to tell Giles in exchange for all of Dawn’s _Sweet Valley High_ books. 

“They’re so middle school anyway,” she told him.

“Good,” Spike answered. “Should be right for me.”

* * * 

“Hey, I know you,” Spike said, because it was the guy who built the Buffy-Bot.

“Yes, you do,” the guy said, and then fired something that looked like a little red plastic toy at Spike. There was a burning sensation in his neck and he growled, vamped out his face, and fell over into darkness.

He woke up in manacles on his stomach, which, granted, wasn’t the first time in his life that had happened, but still, quite shameful to be taken out by the nerd patrol. 

“I’m going to eat your faces off,” he slurred at the moving voices around his head.

“Not until we get this little gem out of your neck,” Buffy-Bot guy said. “You can thank us later.”

Spike growled, yanked at his restraints, and fell back into darkness with another burning jab to his neck.

Then the world was reeling and he was being dragged up Buffy’s front steps. They let go, and he flopped down limp as a doll. 

“Like I said,” Buffy-Bot guy said, and Spike squinted up at his doubled image, “you can thank us later. Dinner is served.”

He leaned over Spike and Spike heard the door chime go off. The nerd herd disappeared.

Spike could hear their hearts beating, their blood rushing, as they ran off. He was very hungry. He put a hand to the back of his neck and felt a bandage there.

The door opened behind him and Dawn said, “Spike?”

“No,” Spike said, and tried to push himself up but his arms were shaking.

Then she was over him, long hair brushing his face, grabbing his shoulders and saying his name in a high, frightened voice.

“Get away from me,” Spike growled.

She put a hand on his face. There was a band-aid on one of her fingers, a tiny speck of blood seeping through. 

She smelled delicious. His mouth salivated.

“Are you okay? Spike?” Dawn was asking, but her voice was far away, masked by the beating of her heart, her blood thrumming in her veins.

“Get away!” Spike yelled, and pushed her. “Get in the house and ward it! Get away from me!”

Dawn stumbled backward, still crouched down. “Spike?” she said, now terrified, and he thrust himself up, grabbed her roughly and shoved her through the open door. 

He turned and fell down the front steps, running without seeing. Behind him, Dawn screamed, “Spike!”

He ran.

* * * 

There was a long, dark stretch in his mind after that, but he came to himself with a full belly and blood all over his face and hands. 

He put a single stake in his coat, got on his bike, and left Sunnydale.

* * * 

There was a beach, and a cave, and a trial. Many trials, he thought. It all blurred together.

Then there was a burning white light that ate him whole in incomprehensible pain.

* * * 

He was alone in the dark and his body was whole and so was something else, inside of him, and all around him pressed down nearly two centuries of iniquity and avarice and carnage. 

He pressed his face into the dirt and wept.

* * * 

He was on his bike barreling down a dark road and he thought, “Where am I going?” but then the thought slid away and he just drove. 

* * * 

It was dark, and dusty, and familiar, and he wrapped his coat around himself and drifted in a haze. Something was clacking, clicking, snapping down into the darkness with him, and it trilled, yammered, prattled as it came, and then it screamed, then said his name and then there was yelling and noise and dark again.

* * * 

He came to himself in manacles, again, but at least he was on his back, and on a soft surface. He blinked at the ceiling and something shifted beside him so he turned his head.

“Hello,” Giles said softly. 

Spike blinked at him. 

“Do you know where you are?” Giles asked and Spike’s eyes traveled over the room, taking in the equipment, the windows with the shades drawn. 

Buffy’s old workout room, behind the Magic Box. He nodded at Giles.

Giles helped him sit up on the couch, and then brought him a glass of blood. His hands were bound in front of him, so he could grasp it, but he hesitated as he brought it to his mouth.

“It’s animal,” Giles said. “From the butcher,” so he drank, because he was ravenous. 

He finished and shook his head when Giles offered more, even though he was still hungry, because he also felt queasy.

Giles sat back down in the chair beside the couch.

“Do you remember what’s happened?” Giles said, and Spike nodded.

“Chip’s gone,” he said hoarsely. He rubbed his face with his hands. “Soul’s back.”

“So it would seem,” Giles said, ever so softly. “Can you tell me why?”

Spike shook his head, rubbed at his face. “Did I hurt her?” he asked, feeling detached.

“Who?” Giles asked.

“Dawn. Did I hurt Dawn?” He was terrified to know, but he looked up into Giles’ face. 

It was sympathetic. “No, she’s fine. We’re all fine,” Giles said. “They left you on the porch and Dawn came out. She said you shouted at her, pushed her away, and ran off. That was a month ago. Then earlier today, Anya went into the basement and found you down there.”

Spike nodded. His hands shook. “Good,” he said. “Good.”

He didn’t have to say anything more for a while as Giles double-checked his soul status with some mumbo jumbo, and then Willow came in and got a good glow on checking him out with her hocus pocus. 

Willow left, and then Giles took off the restraints.

“Sure you want to do that?” Spike said, low and rusty.

“Trust me, if I weren’t sure, they would stay on,” Giles said. 

Spike sat rubbing at his wrists and Giles put the restraints away, then stood looking at him with his hands in his pockets.

“Do you need anything?” Giles asked, and Spike shook his head.

“There’s more blood in the refrigerator,” Giles said, pointing to the appliance. 

Spike nodded. 

“I’ll be in the next room if you want anything,” Giles said, and headed for the door. He paused, turned back. “Would you like to see Dawn?”

“No.” Spike shook his head emphatically. “No.”

“All right.” And Giles left him alone.

* * * 

Mostly he slept, and ate. Giles and the Scoobies kept checking in on him, tiptoeing around him like he was an invalid or a mental patient. Maybe he was. He lay on the couch and half-dozed, hearing people in the shop through the wall, conversations and footsteps and the ring of the cash register. 

His eyes were shut and he was drifting but the scent pulled him up. Without opening his eyes, he said, “You’re not supposed to be back here.”

She scuffled further into the room, the door creaking as she opened it wider to slip in. “Hi,” Dawn said. 

Spike sighed and opened his eyes. “Hi,” he said. 

She looked away, started picking at her fingers. “Are you okay?” she asked.

He let his eyes shut again. He was so, so tired, but he said, “I will be.”

“Okay,” Dawn whispered, and after a moment she scuffled back toward the door. 

“Dawn,” Spike said, and she paused. “I’m sorry I left like that. Without telling you.”

“It was for me, right?” she said. “That’s what Giles says.”

He swallowed. “I promised . . . I had to keep you safe. Even from me,” he said. 

She shifted, leaning on the door and making it creak. “Thank you,” she said finally, and slipped back out.

* * * 

At night, when the shop was closed, he would venture into it, prowl around the books and poke at the trinkets in the dark. Xander kept asking him to patrol with them, but Spike declined. 

During the day, when the shop was open and Dawn would come there after school to do her homework, the way she used to come to his place, he would stay in the room, doze on the couch. Giles offered to get him a television, but he found he didn’t want it. The fridge and the couch seemed to be meeting his needs for the moment.

“Maybe you should go talk to Angel,” Giles said one day, hesitant, and Spike snorted.

“You’ve got to be kidding,” he said.

Giles cleaned off his glasses. “He’s the only other vampire we know of with a soul. He’s the only other person, probably on this earth, that can understand whatever it is you’re going through right now. And . . . there’s a relationship there.”

Spike propped himself up on his elbows. “You kicking me out?”

Giles shook his head and smiled. “No, although Anya may try to hurt you if you keep moving merchandise around at night,” he said. “No, you may stay here for as long as you want, as long as you need. But it’s something for you to think about, seeing Angel.”

Spike lay back down. “Don’t know that I’d be welcome,” he said.

Giles cleared his throat. “You are,” he said, because of course he’d spoken to him, being a nosy bastard like that. “If you go to see him, though, you should know that there have been some . . . changes, with Angel.”

* * * 

Spike ended up going to LA mostly because he didn’t know what else to do with himself and in Sunnydale, he couldn’t seem to leave the confines of the Magic Box. Maybe, he thought, he and Angel would have a big throwdown, like the good old days, and that would get him moving again.

Instead, Angel wanted him to sing.

“You want me to what?” Spike asked, because, yeah, Angel is crazy, but come on.

They’d arranged to meet after-hours at a little nightclub, and the only other person in audience was the host, a green demon with red horns. Spike had not missed the whiff of two humans as he came in, though, and he was willing to beat they were armed with stakes, waiting for a signal from Angel.

“Sing,” Angel said. “Humor me. Just a few bars.”

Spike sighed and looked to the ceiling, but he’d come all this way, endured awkward goodbyes and good lucks with the Scoobies and a stilted farewell with Dawn that had just about broken his heart, and then there was that he’d no where else to go, so what the hell.

“Crazy,” he sang, “I’m crazy for feeling so lonely. I’m crazy, crazy for feeling so blue.”

Angel’s mouth quirked and Spike stopped to glare at him.

“Nice pipes,” the host said. “You should hear this one,” and he jerked a thumb at Angel, who gave him an offended look. The host looked meaningfully at Angel. “Also, that’s one genuine soul in there.”

Angel looked at him thoughtfully. “All right,” he said, and offered Spike a blood-and-whisky. 

* * * 

“About Connor,” Angel said when they got to the hotel.

“Connor,” Spike said blankly.

“The baby,” Angel clarified, then added, “My son.”

“Right,” Spike said. “The baby.” He paused. “Almost thought Giles was pulling my leg.”

Angel smiled, shook his head. “No, he’s real. Unbelievable, but real.” He cleared his throat. “I wouldn’t let you in here if I thought you were a threat.”

“Right,” Spike said.

“And if you become one,” Angel said, looking him in the eyes.

“Right,” Spike said again. “I got it.”

“That goes for all my family,” Angel said.

Spike nodded, looked around the lobby. He resisted the urge to say that once upon a time, he was Angel’s family. 

* * *

It was a hotel, after all, so getting him a room was no problem. And Angel wanted him to work, be part of his “help the helpless” team, earn his keep.

“I thought we were going to talk about our feelings and cry,” Spike said when Angel came to his room to rouse him for a case.

“Some other time,” Angel said. “Chop chop, we gotta go.”

Cordelia welcomed him like an old friend, startling him with a hug, and Wesley greeted him with a grave, businesslike handshake. The smart girl seemed torn between fright and delight at his presence, and the black guy definitely wanted to stake him. 

Spike very pointedly stayed away from the baby. He tried not to look at it when it was in the room.

He worked. He slept. He ate. He trained. He went to the nightclub and listened to Cordelia give earnest, ear-piercing performances. 

He tried not to think about the life (or unlife, if you will) that had come before, and all the things that he’d done in it.

* * * 

He did live in the same building as the little nipper, so he couldn’t avoid him forever, and inevitably, he was alone in the office while Cordelia powdered her nose (or more likely, made out with her inter-dimensional boy-toy) when it started squawking from its bassinet.

Spike ignored it for a while, but when Cordelia didn’t come back, he stood and cautiously approached. He peered down at its red, crinkly face.

“Hey, now, cut that out,” he said, and the baby squalled. 

“Cordelia,” Spike shouted and got a faint, “In a minute!” in response.

Spike snorted. The baby cried. There was a blue stuffed elephant on the desk, and Spike held it up and danced it around. “Here, you want your elephant? Look at Mr. Elephant!”

The baby sobbed pathetically and kicked its feet. Spike found a key on the elephant and wound it up. It put forth music. The baby put forth wails. Spike danced the elephant right in the baby’s face, and it flailed its hands around, finally grabbing the elephant in one, and then grasping one of Spike’s fingers in the other. 

Its sobs quieted to unhappy grumbles. “Hey, now,” Spike said, “grabby, aren’t you?”

The baby gave him a dirty look and started chewing on the elephant’s leg. 

Spike stood and stared at the baby. He tried to extract his finger but stopped when the baby threatened to start crying again. He sighed and waited for Cordelia.

“I think he’s going to look like me,” Angel said, right behind him. 

“I guess,” Spike said, studying the little face. He looked like an old man to Spike, but he had Angel’s dark hair. And he gave a dirty look just like his dad.

Well, not just like his dad.

“Do you think he’d be my uncle? Or my great-uncle? Or both?” Spike mused. 

Angel stepped up beside him and gave Spike a startled look. “I don’t know,” he said. “I didn’t think of it like that. Something, between me and Darla.”

“You should make sure Dru doesn’t find out about him,” Spike said, and pulled his finger away.

“I know,” Angel said, then leaned in and scooped up the baby. “Want to hold him?”

Spike gave him a dubious look. 

“Spike,” Angel said, “you wouldn’t be here if you couldn’t be trusted. If I couldn’t trust you. You can trust yourself.”

Spike looked away, then back. He held out his finger and the baby grasped it again. 

“Maybe later,” he said, and that seemed to be enough for Angel.

* * * 

Everyone was in the lobby when he came down the stairs, even Cordelia’s plaything, engaged in earnest discussion. Spike meandered over.

“Did I miss a staff meeting memo?” he asked, and everyone turned to look at him.

“Spike,” Cordelia said, and put her hand on his arm. “Spike, it’s Dawn.”

He thought he would lose his mind waiting for the sun to go down so he could get out there and start looking for her. Angel went through the sewers to meet up with some contacts, and the humans all went out on the hunt, save Cordelia, who frantically tried to sooth both Connor and Spike.

“Maybe she’s still in Sunnydale,” Cordelia said. “We don’t even know that she would come to LA.”

“She came here,” Spike said, prowling the lobby. 

Cordelia hesitated, then asked, “Because you’re here?”

Spike shook his head and didn’t look at her. Cordelia sighed. “Because Buffy came here. When she left Sunnydale.”

Spike paced. The sun sank lower.

* * * 

He started at the bus station, hoping she hadn’t hitched, and was in luck. Her scent was all over the place. 

He followed it to a McDonald’s, then to a movie theater. It wandered around a park, lingered in front of store windows, and finally, finally came to a diner.

She was alone at a little table with what looked like a cup of coffee in front of her.

“That stuff will stunt your growth,” Spike said when he came up to her. 

“I guess,” Dawn said, and frowned at her cup. “I don’t know, I never heard that.” She looked at him, timid and hopeful and afraid.

Spike cocked his head at her. “May I join you?” he asked, and she nodded.

The coffee looked cold, and the mug was still half-full, he noted. When the waitress came over, he ordered a hot chocolate with whipped cream, and a smile cautiously curved Dawn’s lips. 

“What about you?” he asked her. “More coffee?”

She shook her head. “Can I have the same?” she asked the waitress, who looked at her kindly and went to get their drinks.

Dawn pushed the coffee away. “It wasn’t very good,” she told Spike. “Bitter and too hot, then too cold.”

“Don’t drink the stuff myself,” he said, and she blushed.

“No, of course not,” she said. 

They sat in silence until their drinks arrived, and then sipped at them, licked the whipped cream off the top. 

“Better?” Spike asked, and Dawn nodded.

“Gonna tell me about it?” he asked, and she blushed furiously, angry or embarrassed or both.

“I got arrested for shoplifting,” she said. 

“So I hear, sticky fingers,” he said wryly. 

“Giles was _really_ mad,” she added. 

“I’ll bet,” he said. 

They finished their hot chocolate, and then Dawn said, “Maybe I could come stay here in LA with you. Angel has a hotel, right? So there’s lots of room. I could help watch the baby. And I’d go to school, if you said to.”

“Things that bad with Giles?” Spike asked seriously, and Dawn splayed her torn-up fingers on the tabletop, studied them intently. She shook her head.

“It’s not Giles,” she said finally. “I know what he’s done for me, what he’s doing for me. It’s not – it’s not anyone. It’s just . . . everything.”

“I know, Dawn,” he said quietly. 

“Maybe somewhere different,” she said, and looked up at him with big, pleading eyes. “Maybe things would feel different.”

“I don’t think it works like that,” Spike said. 

“It’s what _you_ did,” she retorted.

He shook his head. “Not the same,” he said, because it wasn’t, though he didn’t know how to explain it to her. “I was . . . I was all messed up in the head when I came back, Dawn.”

“Are you still?” she asked.

He fiddled with his empty cup. “I don’t know,” he said. “I’m . . . It’s better. It’s getting better. I was scared, Dawn. I was so scared I was going to hurt you, or one of the others.”

“You didn’t,” Dawn said. “Even before you went away and came back, you know,” she waved a hand vaguely, “not a monster. Even before that, you didn’t hurt me, when you had the chance.”

“I thought I was going to,” Spike said. “I could have. I think it made me mad.”

Dawn looked like she might cry. “Because you promised Buffy you’d protect me,” she said.

Spike nodded. “That. And more. Because it was you,” he said. 

Her eyes were shiny, and she sniffed. “Okay,” she said. After a while, she added, “I miss you.”

“Yeah,” he said. “That lot at Angel’s, they make fun of me for watching _Passions_.”

Dawn sniffed again. “Infidels,” she said, and gave him a crooked grin. 

Spike smiled back at her.

“Listen,” he said, “I’m coming to Sunnydale in a few weeks, see Xander and Anya tie the knot.”

“Okay,” Dawn said. 

“Talked to Giles when I got the invite,” he said. “About maybe staying on after that. See how Sunnydale feels now. Maybe make a go of it there.”

Dawn swirled the dregs of her hot chocolate in her cup. “Giles didn’t say anything,” she said.

“Haven’t been sure it would happen,” Spike said. “But he told me he’d fix up that room for me, at the Magic Box, in case I want to stay. Earn my rent as an undead guard dog for the place.”

“Aren’t you working for Angel?” she asked. “I mean, can you just leave here like that?”

Spike snorted. “Angel,” he said. “Bloke barely squeezes in any cases around Gymboree and Teletubbies. Not that losing me isn’t a blow to anyone, but he’ll bounce back.”

Dawn smiled and shook her head. “You’re so lame,” she said, and it warmed him, who’d been cold for so many long years. 

“Ready to go call Giles?” he asked, and she nodded, sighed.

“Guess I have to, right?” she said, giving him a pleading look. 

He gave her his best stern face. “Yes,” he said firmly. 

“I’m going to be grounded _forever_ ,” she moaned. 

“Not forever,” Spike said, because he knew something about forever. “But long enough, I’m sure.”

* * * 

The wedding was a bust, in that it didn’t result in holy matrimony, because, as Spike had suspected for a number of years, Xander had no balls.

There was, however, a delightful row between Xander’s father and one of Anya’s former co-workers, and after that there was still free food and drink and a DJ. It appeared that Xander’s family and Anya’s friends were quite happy to party on someone else’s dime, regardless of the day’s unhappy turn of events.

Spike was sprawled in a chair with a drink, between Clem and Angel, who was jiggling Connor and making ridiculous noises and faces at the poor child. On the dance floor, Cordelia’s boy-toy was spinning her around elegantly, while Willow and Tara did a tentative post-rehab reconciliation shuffle. 

He wondered where Dawn had got off to and hoped it wasn’t a coat closet with that Blavartian teen she’d been flirting with earlier. Blavartians were notorious for kissing and telling, and Spike thought Dawn was still too young to have her reputation ruined.

Everyone turned when Giles led Anya into the room, red-eyed but with her face freshly scrubbed, a shaky smile in place. The music stopped and everyone began to cheer for her, so she gave them a little curtsy. 

“Thank you, everyone, for eating my food and drinking my liquor,” she said, and the crowd applauded their own abhorrent behavior. “And thank you all for being here, on what should have been a happy occasion. At least,” she had to pause to sniffle, then laugh tremulously, “at least you’re not fair-weather friends.”

This earned her more cheering and some foot-stomping. Anya smiled, and despite being a dreadful mess, she looked gracious, lovely. 

“Carry on,” she said, waving an arm. “Giles promised he would dance with me today, and I’m holding him to it, wedding or not.”

Giles did, indeed, take her by the arm and out to the dance floor, smiling proudly at her. They got some more smattered applause, and then people and demons went back to their dance partners, their drinks, the buffet.

“I love a good party,” Clem said happily, and Spike snorted. Across the room, he saw Dawn come out from the back and head toward him. 

When she stopped in front of him, he said, “I’d ask you to dance if that dress weren’t so hideous,” with a sly smile.

Dawn opened her mouth, shut it, opened it again, shut it again, fighting a grin. Spike could hear about three different retorts hanging unspoken in the air, all of which involved how lame he was. In the end, she took the high road.

“Then I’ll just have to ask you,” she said smartly, and held out her hand. 

He looked up at her, and he could see Buffy there too, her strength and grace and humor, but it was Dawn as well, growing into herself, finding her footing. It hurt him someplace deep inside, someplace that had been empty for years on end, but it filled him with something else too, something he wasn’t ready to put a name to, something warm and shining.

He handed Clem his drink and took her hand, standing up.

“Well, then, niblet,” he said, “let’s give this a whirl.”


End file.
